Thoughts so far...

Well I said I'd let you know how I got on with my latest escapist toilet reading and hear I am to do just that.

Having got a little way through the first chapter I began to think that this was nothing more than a guy having a mid-life crisis and telling me all about it. To some extent I guess that's what it is but wait, it's so much more too! Yes it's another adventure where a guy escapes the trappings of modern life to see things, meet people and have experiences but already it seems that there is an element of self discovery about this journey as well.

Maybe the term 'mid-life crisis' is too dismissive, as if there is no value in taking time out, to do no more than go on a journey and see what it teaches you.

As well as the deep and meaningfuls there's also bucket loads of sumptuously written descriptions of life on the water. From the nervy moments at the first lock to the peace of still water and the soporific affect of life in the slow lane Paul Gogerty is a proper writer! I mean I enjoyed Long Way... but this guy sculpts images in my mind with words. Proper writer!

Having four kids and a busy life means that I've only just reached chapter three. So much has happened already in this multifaceted journey. One part which touched me was this poem written by the authors seriously ill father in law who the writer unexpectedly takes time out of his journey to visit in hospital. If you've been forced to consider death and all that that means for the body and soul as it closes its grip, you maybe touched too.

Pathology of Colours

I know the colour rose, and it is lovely,
but not when it ripens in a tumour;
and healing greens, leaves and grass, so springlike,
in limbs that fester are not springlike.

I have seen red-blue tinged with hirsute mauve
in the plum-skin face of a suicide.
I have seen white, china white almost, stare
from behind the smashed windscreen of a car.

And the criminal, multi-coloured flash
of an H-bomb is no more beautiful
than an autopsy when the belly's opened -
to show cathedral windows never opened.

So in the simple blessing of a rainbow,
in the bevelled edge of a sunlit mirror,
I have seen, visible, Death's artifact
like a soldier's ribbon on a tunic tacked.

Copyright from New and Collected Poems (Hutchinson, 2003), copyright © Dannie Abse 2003, used by permission of the author